Happy Holidays!

I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday and are looking forward to the next week at home with your families. Here are a few pictures of the class together over the last few days of 2013!

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Winter!

This is just a friendly reminder to make sure your student has their snow pants and snow boots for Tuesday. If they do not have the appropriate clothing, they won't be able to play in the snow or on the structure during recess times.

Please also remember to send in hats, gloves, scarves, winter jackets, etc. with names in each item so that your student stays warm and safe while playing outside.

It's already the middle of December?!

How is it that the month is half over and we only have one more week before vacation? Here's what we've been up to over the past two weeks.

Language Arts

We've had two new words introduced since we last caught up - my and of. The of cards will be sent home the week of 12/16. Please remember to continue practicing all of our sight words at home with your student.

I will be sending home more paper books for your student to keep at home and continue to practice reading to themselves and to someone at home. Look for these books by Wednesday.

We've learned 24 letters so far! Over the past two weeks we've learned Vv, Ww, Xx and Yy! This coming week, we'll be focusing on our last two letters, Qq and Zz. We're almost there!

Math

During math this week, we focused on the concept of "more" and "1 more." We are using these terms to help the students learn about number relationships.

Social Studies

 We've been learning about holiday lights from around the world. Last week we learned about Hanukkah's eight nights of lights. This week we learned about Kwanzaa and the seven principals of Kwanzaa.

We've also been learning our holiday songs for next week's upcoming Winter Concert!

Important Reminders

*The Winter Concert is scheduled for Wednesday, December 18th at 9:15 am. The classroom Holiday Party will immediately follow.
*Each child will participate in the Holiday Book Swap. Please send in a wrapped book with your student's name on it. The book should cost no more than $4.00 that be suitable for either gender. We will pick numbers from a hat to find out who we will swap books with.
*I will be updating the classroom share calendar and the volunteer schedule this week. If your schedule has changed since September, please let me know so that I may make the proper adjustments.
*Please remember to send your child to school with both snow boots AND snow pants. If they do not have both items, they will not be able to play in the snow or on the playground structure.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here is a little video about what we're all thankful for this year. A huge thank you goes out to Mrs. Klipfel who put everything together!

Enjoy and have a happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from Mrs. Inconiglios' Class

Where did all the turkeys go?!

We sent home turkeys for the families to decorate, but I'm not sure they made it back! Here are the wonderful disguises you all came up with for our classroom turkeys!

Busy Bees - Nov. 18

Language Arts

As this is the week before Thanksgiving, we've been working on a few great Thanksgiving and turkey related activities!

We read the book A Turkey for Thanksgiving by Eve Bunting this week and discussed her word choice when she wrote the book. She used great describing words like quietly, lumbered, blundered and crunched to described how each of the characters in the book made their way to Mr. and Mrs. Moose's house for Thanksgiving dinner. For our writing block, we did the same thing by discussing how we would get to their house and came up with some great words like quietly, fast, scrunched and crunched. 

Our sight word, my, for this week is a tricky word. This is one that we cannot sound out and need to memorize. Please be sure to continue working with your student on practicing reading these words.

We had a busy week in Fundations this week learning three new letters - Hh, Kk and Ll. As next week is a very short week for us, we'll continue to work on these letters on Tuesday and Wednesday to get extra practice with these letters.

Language Arts

We continue to work on decomposing and composing numbers to 5. Math In Focus uses specific language to help teach flexibility in student thinking. When you begin to see homework or classwork come home, you'll notice that we're using language that looks like "2 and 2 makes 4" or "4 is 2 and 2." It's very important that we understand how these numbers work together before we can begin using more traditional mathematical words like addition, subtraction and equals. 

Science

We've completed learning about our Five Senses! The students loved having our taste test on Tuesday and are remembering where we taste certain tastes (sweet, salty, sour, bitter) on our tongues. I'm impressed with how much we've learned about our senses over the past month!

Important Messages

*Wednesday is an early release at 12 noon. Please remember no lunch will be served, but we will still have snack in class that morning.

*Parent/Teacher conference reminders will be sent home on Tuesday, December 3.

*Parent/Teacher conferences for the 3-day program will be held on Friday, December 13.

Two Week Update! - Nov 4-15

It's been a few busy weeks! Sorry for the lateness of the posts!

Language Arts

Over the past two weeks we've been learning a lot and putting our newly acquired skills to good use!

In our Daily 5 routine we've added in two new activities - read to someone and listen to reading. We rotate our stations each Daily 5 time and the students will have the opportunity to read to self and read to someone each day. On Fridays, we're lucky enough to have the iPads in our classroom and use the Storia app from Scholastic to listen to reading. The students used the iPads as a whole class on Wednesday this week and nine students used the iPads on Friday and did an amazing job!

Fundations has been moving along and we've learned four new letters! Ee, Rr, Jj and Pp are the new letters from the past two weeks we've been working on. Please continue to work with your student on their letters both the sounds they make and how to write them the kindergarten way.

We've learned two new site words, are and for, over the last two weeks. We now have 10 sight words that the students have been introduced to. It's very important that you add the new sight words to your sight word ring and practice the words with your student at home.

Math

 We've completed chapter two and have started chapter 4. Last week we wrapped up chapter 2 with assessments that will be coming home shortly.

This week, we began learning the very important skill of composing and decomposing numbers to 5. This chapter will also focus on counting from 0 to 10.

Science

We continue to learn about our senses and learned about our sense of smell this week. We smelled different jars that contained four different smells - orange, onion, coffee and peppermint. The students did blind smell tests and had to decide as a group what they thought was in each. Next week - the sense of taste!

Important Messages

*The Kindergarten teachers will be giving the book There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow as our gift to each Kindergarten student next month during our book swap!
*Early release on Wednesday, November 27th at noon - no lunch is served that day.
*Parent/Teacher conferences will take place on Friday, December 13th. This day is also an early release, lunch will not be served.
*Our Kindergarten Winter Concert is scheduled for Wednesday, December 18th at 9:15 am. We will have the holiday part immediately following the concert.
*Your student will participate in a Holiday Book Swap! Please make sure that the book is suitable for either a boy or a girl and the book is no more than $4.00. Please wrap the book and have your student's name on the gift as the giver.